alt Hacker NewsDegrowth is absolutely not niche in Western Europe. In Germany and NL, it is the new religion along with free Palestine movement.
Take any moderately educated Zillenial and ask them what they feel passionately about.
People are feeling more and more alienated from large scale projects of humanity. They have also given up on religion itself. What remains is a facade of religion where degrowth and Palestine take act as Pseudo Religion.
Here in Germany I see stickers and Graffiti all the time.
“Fuck the big Tech”
“Fuck big oil”
“ChatGPT bad”
These are the kind of flyers I see. Of course I’m leaving out the Palestine stuff here.
There are close to Zero educated people excited about the idea of growth. Ask them and they would tell you they’d rather have all capitalists done away with return to a past when we were all peaceful and not “destroying the planet”.
Obviously I’m not claiming degrowth is majority. I’m claiming that at least within my bubble, zero people are excited about the potential of growth. And non trivial number of people want to kill growth.
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As a Dutchman, I was so surprised by the contents of this comment that I finally decided to make an account.
Bringing up Palestine in this discussion is definitely a choice. Relating them as you have is special.
The amount of public figures advocating degrowth is low and declining. And I follow a lot of climate voices.
I'm old enough to remember the 1980's when people largely adopted a strikingly similar "new religion" that advocated for a free South Africa.
The Free Tibet "religion" was also a huge thing for a while in the 90's.
There are countless other examples. All with varying degrees of success.
The point is, there's nothing new about people being passionate about human rights. It has absolutely nothing to do with... well... whatever "degrowth" is.
Well we’re both German and my experience is different. Stickers don’t really tell me anything and the rest is just anecdote.